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By 2020, 3.6 million people will die each year from air pollution
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
Hot summer does not add happiness to city dwellers. On such days, the air is especially heavily polluted by automobile exhaust and industrial emissions: it is difficult to breathe, and there is nothing to breathe. Do you notice?
Andrea Pozzer from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (Germany) and her colleagues note that if a similar situation is currently occurring in some places, then by 2050 it will become the norm for the majority of humanity, especially in China (primarily in the east of the country), India (in its north) and the Middle East.
By mid-century, air quality around the world will be roughly the same as it is today in the urban areas of Southeast Asia. This is the conclusion reached by researchers from the Institute of Chemistry, the Institute of Atmospheric Physics and the European Commission Joint Research Centre, who used the EMAC atmospheric model. The experts took into account five main air pollutants that have a negative impact on human health: nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, ozone, carbon monoxide and particles with a diameter of less than 2.5 microns.
Modeling showed that levels of nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and particulate matter would increase in East Asia, while people in northern India and the Gulf States would be particularly threatened by rising ozone levels. The reasons for this are high population density and projected increases in industrial production and transportation.
Air pollution in Europe and North America will also worsen, but not as much as in Asia, thanks to environmental protection measures that have been taken there for several decades.
It is worth noting that air pollution is one of the main modern dangers. Already now, according to the World Health Organization, 1.3 million people die from it every year.
Unless world leaders take serious action now to tackle air pollution and water waste, by 2020 it will kill 3.6 million people a year and increase greenhouse gas emissions by 50%.
In just 40 years, 2.3 billion people (about a third of all people currently living on the planet) will live in areas without access to adequate water resources.
By 2050, the world's population will grow by about 2.5 billion people from the current 7 billion, while the prospects for climate change, biodiversity and water conservation, and the negative impact of pollution on human health are "far more concerning" than in 2008.
Energy consumption will increase by 80% by 2050, resulting in greenhouse gas emissions reaching such levels that the average global surface temperature will rise by 3 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.
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